Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection

2013

shooter
tactical
adventure
action
stealth
single player

The story

Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection is a video game compilation released exclusively for the PlayStation 3. It includes all the mainline Metal Gear games directed and designed by Hideo Kojima (including the VR Missions standalone expansion) that were released from 1987 through 2012. Bonus content include motion comic adaptations of the Metal Gear Solid graphic novels by Kris Oprisko and Ashley Wood and a 100-page booklet that catalogs numerous promotional posters, brochures and advertisement related to the games in the compilation.

What it’s like

Mostly fog-grey and olive-drab, with the flat, hazy palette of military jungles, snowy fortresses and rain-soaked tarmac, and a lot of time spent in cramped corridors lit by monitor glow. The collection moves from the top-down sprite-era original through the cinematic PlayStation-era instalments, so the feel shifts from bare, blocky pixels to richly modelled faces and long, talky cutscenes. Its sound is a steady undercurrent of ambient rain and crickets, broken by the sharp alert sting when a guard spots you, and a lot of earnest radio chatter between characters. Vibe: tense, wry, self-serious, often slow. It suits a long evening alone, a patient afternoon, or a stretch of quiet concentration where pausing to listen to a conversation is part of the pleasure. Pacing is deliberate: long stretches of creeping and planning, then short bursts of fraught action. Its tone mixes melodrama with a dry sense of humour, and its characters are often weary soldiers and scientists wrestling with inherited guilt, identity and loyalty. Violence is present throughout, mostly stylised combat and some grim deaths, with occasional mature themes and suggestive humour; it is not gentle. For players who want stealth, an absurdly detailed world and a series of heavy, reflective stories told at a measured pace.

More games like Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection

Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collectionand we’ll explain which ones fit you.